Wife of Late Khmer Rouge Leader Pot Dies

Published 8:00 pm, Monday, June 30, 2003

Khieu Ponnary, the first wife of the late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and member of his regime's inner circle, has died in northwestern Cambodia. She was 83 and suffered from cancer and mental illness.

Khieu Ponnary died Tuesday evening in the town of Pailin, a former stronghold of the communist regime that killed an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s.

"She was very old and also suffered from cancer for quite a long time," said her nephew, Ieng Vuth, a deputy governor of Pailin. "We are saddened by her loss. She was a nice and highly educated woman."

Khieu Ponnary married Pol Pot in 1956 and was considered a member of the Khmer Rouge's inner circle during its heyday.

She participated in her husband's communist revolutionary activities from the 1950s, going underground in 1965 and serving as head of the national women's association when the Khmer Rouge was in power from 1975-79.

However, according to most accounts, she already showed signs of mental illness, especially paranoia, by the time Cambodia's civil war began in 1970.

Pol Pot, who died in 1998 as a prisoner of his Khmer Rouge comrades, had separated from her in the 1980s and took a second, younger wife by whom he had a daughter.

Like many of the Khmer Rouge's top leaders, Khieu Ponnary studied in France in the early 1950s. Earlier, she was the first female Cambodian to graduate from high school, earning a baccalaureate degree from Phnom Penh's elite Lycee Sisowath in 1940, during the French colonial period.

Sometime after the Khmer Rouge was ousted, Khieu Ponnary was reportedly taken to China for medical treatment, but failed to show improvement.

She later returned to Cambodia, living with her sister and husband Ieng Sary after he led a mass defection of thousands of Khmer Rouge cadres to the Cambodian government in 1996.

Ieng Vuth said a Buddhist ritual would be held for his aunt and a cremation ceremony is scheduled for Thursday.